


hello, i love you, won't you tell me your name

by perzimon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anesthesia, Confessions, Explicit Language, Humor, M/M, Pining, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9828782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perzimon/pseuds/perzimon
Summary: Keith's human enough to have wisdom teeth and unlucky enough to need them extracted. The team despairs.





	1. her arms are wicked, and her legs are long

When he finally comes to, it’s to a dull throbbing in his head and hushed whispers all around him.

“I think,” says a girl’s voice, edged with impatience, “Keith may finally be waking up.”

Keith recognizes his name before several alarm bells go off in the dim confusion of his hindbrain. Whoever’s speaking seems to know who he is, but a quick search for her voice in the annals of his memory yields nothing. It’s quick because the annals of his memory reveal themselves to be woefully empty: Keith can’t remember much of anything at all.

With great effort, he wades through the murky quagmire in his mind and dregs up whatever information he can.

His name: Keith Kogane. His game: fighter pilot. His claim: a mysterious knife and the open skies.

Electing to feign sleep until the situation reveals itself, Keith lets himself sink deeper into the starch-scented sheets, and listens closely for more context. His surroundings don’t seem overtly hostile, but waking up in an unfamiliar bed, surrounded by unknown voices and a pulsing headache rarely makes for good news.

“That’s what you said five minutes ago,” a deeper voice whispers from his left side, sounding impatient. “And ten minutes before that. If he doesn’t wake up soon, I’ve been meaning to take a look at the Castle’s hydraulic—”

There’s the sound of a hand thumping against fabric and a quiet but indignant _ow!_ before someone else cuts him off. “Come on, Hunk!” A new voice wheedles, “You’ve seen those anesthesia videos on Youtube before, right? This could be our only chance.”

“But that’s on _Earth_ ,” the other boy shoots back. “Who knows if this Altean stuff does the same thing?”

“Maybe he’ll cry,” Anesthesia-enthusiast says wistfully. “Like a little baby. God, do you know _how_ long I’ve been waiting to get some solid blackmail on Keith ‘Fingerless gloves are a functional accessory’ Kogane—”

“Fingerless gloves _are_ a functional accessory, Lance. Sometimes my palms are colder than the tips of my fingers. I need the dexterity that uncovered fingers offers as well as the traction—”

“ _Blackmail_ ,” Anesthesia-enthusiast hisses, “ _focus on the mission objective.”_ Keith strains to keep listening as their conversation descends into quiet bickering.

Mentally, he tallies one hostile enemy agent, one possibly neutral accomplice with practical and impeccable fashion taste that Keith may be able to sway to his side, and one girl, motives unknown. Additional enemies possible, but unlikely; his antagonists’ actions and words ring astonishingly amateur. He inches his hand towards the knife holster pressed reassuringly against his hip, nearly wraps his fingers around the handle before the girl’s voice says, “Wait, guys! He moved his arm!”

 _Should I make a break for it?_ Keith wonders, rapidly running through his options. If this is to be the end, he would at least like to go down swinging. However, if they’ve been waiting for him to wake up this whole time, then chances are that they don’t mean to dispose of him immediately. Unless they’re the type of evil that tends to monologue, which doesn’t exactly seem out of the question for Anesthesia-enthusiast, but issue of blackmail would suggest that they intend to let Keith live. Three against one odds aren’t what he would call favorable, but if faced with no choice, then—

“Keith, it’s us," the girl's voice continues. "How do you feel?”

Keith blinks the sleep out of his eyes, winces at the bright overhead light, and three pairs of wide eyes swim into view. The high, arched ceiling seems to sway gently while spots of brightness breathe in and out of his peripheral vision. Being able to see does not improve the condition of his headache.

“Um, hello?” Keith mumbles intelligently. It feels like he’s talking around a cotton ball and his throat crackles with the effort.

“Keith, my buddy! You good?” The speaker, whose voice Keith matches to Anesthesia-enthusiast, wears an oversized olive parka and close cropped hair. His wide, gleaming grin reminds Keith of a shark and he nearly says so before remembering his manners.

“Ah, sorry,” Keith says, pulling himself into an upright position and scrambling for some bearing. _Nice pillows_ , he notes distantly. “Have we ... met before? I’m Keith Kogane.”

He flexes his numb facial muscles, which throb their protest, and maneuvers his face into what is his best approximation of a polite smile.

Anesthesia-enthusiast’s face drops almost instantly and he points an accusing finger towards the center of Keith’s chest. “Okay, hotshot. That wasn’t funny when we rescued Shiro, and it isn’t funny now.” He crosses his arms and lifts his nose into the air. “So much for our bonding moment.”

 _Bonding moment?_ thinks Keith, a bit skeptically. _Could it be?_ He’s not Keith’s … usual type, insofar as he has one, but Keith supposes that there’s some boyish charm in the way he pouts, a bravado that past-Keith may have found compelling, under very specific conditions. Alcohol, maybe. It might explain the persistent headache; still, waking up from a drunken tryst to a fully clothed partner and his two friends hovering over him seems too cinematic for Keith's life. He lets his eyes sweep the perimeter for any damning evidence, but neither beer bottles nor condom wrappers appear, planted or otherwise.

Instead, what looks like a well-stocked, expansive operating theater surrounds him. There are a row of drawers and cabinets against the far wall; a table sits in the corner. On it are a number of pliers of various sizes, an enormous rubber mallet, and what appears to be wire mesh. Plastic tubing and some hypodermic needles litter the floor. Immediately, Keith's torture hypothesis springs back to life.

The girl must notice some of Keith’s panic because she moves to lay a hand on his shoulder. “What Lance means to say,” she says, leveling a flat glare in his direction, “is that we’re glad you’re back with us, Keith.”

Keith smoothes the sheets around him and does his best to look apologetic. “Right,” he says. “Of course. It’s good to see you guys as well. My pleasure.” He extends his right hand for her to take. When she remains motionless, he extends his hand towards Lance.

Lance does not take his hand. Lance just stands there, staring at it, as if Keith is extending a bucket of entrails instead of an olive branch. Lance lets his mouth drop open, agog, and looks frantically between the girl, the other boy, Keith, and Keith’s outstretched hand until Keith’s arm begins to burn with the effort.

“Oh my _god_ ,” he says, when he’s finally found his powers of speech. “Oh my god?” His eyebrows fly to his hairline as his eyes begin to sparkle. He reaches up to run his hands through his hair and begins to stare, wide-eyed, at the ground. “Oh my _god_.”

Keith was hoping not to resort to it, but his alien hypothesis rears its head. He’s almost certainly been abducted and has just committed some sort of flagrant alien faux pas and now they’ll grind him to meat pellets and feed him to their pets. He pulls his hand back and stuffs it into his pocket.

Lance emerges from his stupor with a burst of excitement and swings around to face his friends. “Oh my _god_ ,” he repeats, wonder coloring his voice. “Pidge. Hunk. Look at him. Look at how polite he is.” He takes a second to look back at Keith, who’s sitting silently, head tilted in confusion and mild terror, then begins to guffaw. “I don’t even _recognize_ his face when he isn’t all angry and constipated like.”

Rounding back on Keith, he grips him by the shoulders and _shakes_. Vigorously, with more strength than his skinny arms belie. “Who are you,” he demands, “and _where_ is Keith Kogane? _What have you done with him?_ ”

Keith hears his teeth rattle in his skull and the motion upgrades the buzzing tension in his head to a sharp, stabbing pain. He throws Lance off with one arm and huffs, “I just _told_ you: _I’m. Keith. Kogane_. You _idiot_. Get off of me!”

The withering effect he intends for is somewhat lessened by the realization that not only does it _feel_ like he’s talking around a cotton ball, but there _is_ , in fact, a soggy cotton ball in his mouth. He turns his head to the side and spits it angrily onto the floor.

Lance relaxes immediately. “That’s him, alright.”

His friend moves forward to smooth Keith’s sheets back down. Keith notices fingerless gloves on his hands. “Lance, there was never any doubt that this was Keith.”

Keith lets himself lean back into the pillows, lets his eyelids droop closed. The pounding in his temples does not subside. Distantly, he hears Lance say, “I know, I’ve just waited _years_ to do that.”

Keith immediately rules out the possibility a drunken one night stand. He opens his eyes, this time to address the only person in the room he hasn’t spoken to. “Hunk, was it? Unless you’re Pidge? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

From behind the boy's rapidly paling face, Lance begins to screech with laughter (“He thinks you’re _Pidge?_ He looked at you with his own two eyes and thought that between ‘Hunk’ and ‘Pidge’, you look like a _‘Pidge’_?”). Keith determinedly blocks the sound out, raising his hands to rub at his temples. He watches Hunk turn nervously towards the girl, who must be Pidge, and try to get her attention while she glares at Lance, unamused (“Lance, Pidge is a perfectly intimidating name.”).

“Pidge, a little help,” Hunk whispers again, through clenched teeth, desperately and not so quietly. “Where do I even _start?_ The robot space lions? His wisdom teeth? The imminent prospect of universe wide subjugation? The fact that we’re hurtling through uncharted space in what is, for all intents and purposes, a magic spaceship piloted by a ten-thousand something year old alien princess and her trusted advisor, further from Earth than any human has dared to dream?” By the end of his frenzy, Hunk’s voice has raised to a near shout.

“Well, I think you’ve covered most of it. You missed the part where we fight against evil in a giant robot man made of the five lions and we sort of share each other’s thoughts, though,” Pidge says mildly, peering over to see Keith’s reaction. “I guess that’s one way to reorient someone with amnesia.”

“Robot space lions?” Keith tries weakly. “Aliens?”

While Pidge and Hunk look at each other a little helplessly, Lance steps forward, eyes glittering malevolently. “Do you guys know what this means?” he begins, steepling his fingers together with a wicked grin.

Keith has absolutely no idea what this means, but he would love to start getting some clues. Before Lance can continue, the door slides open.

Three figures step into the room, speaking casually amongst each other. Turning his head and cracking the kinks out of his back, Keith squints and identifies a man with startlingly orange hair and a carefully coiffed mustache. He’s talking to a person shrouded in shadow and a woman in a flowing gown.

 _Wow,_ thinks Keith absently. _Very pretty_. _If she's the_ _Alien Princess Hunk was talking about, she looks good for ten-thousand something._

She smiles at him and he wonders, very briefly, if aliens can read people’s minds before clamping down on his thoughts and determinedly thinking of nothing at all.

From across the room, she covers her laugh with a dainty hand. When she’s joined by Pidge’s giggle and Hunk’s deep chuckle, Keith realizes that he’s been thinking out loud.

Next to him, Lance splutters. “What, it’s cute when _he_ says it?”

Before Keith can offer a cutting remark, of which he has plenty, Mustache takes a small step to the left, sweeps his hand outwards to indicate something on the far wall, and the other figure enters Keith’s line of sight for a brief, blessed moment.

Keith feels his heart skip several beats, wonders if he’s in an operating room for heart or knee failure, and feels eminently glad that he’s already sitting down. He raises his right hand to press over his wayward heart and shoots his left hand out to cling to Lance’s parka.

Lance looks down at his hand with an expression that wouldn’t have been out of place if Keith had just vomited all over his jacket.

“Lance,” Keith says. He clears his throat, then repeats with more urgency, “ _Lance.”_

“ _What,_ Keith, I heard you the first time.”

“You said we were buddies, right?”

Lance's face contorts impossibly grotesque and makes little shooing motions with flailing hands. “ _Absolutely not._ It’s a—what do you call it— _figure of speech_ , Keith—”

“Lance,” Keith says, gravely, eyes shining with unshed tears. “Please.”

Lance gulps. Pidge and Hunk watch with matching expressions of delight and unabashed shock. “Fine,” he says, “but don’t get used to it. What is it?”

“Who’s that guy over there,” Keith whispers reverently.

“Who, Coran?” Lance whispers back. “Don’t be rude, Keith. That’s just how he looks.”

Mustache’s head whips up from across the room and he offers Keith a genial wave. _Good hearing_ , Keith notes. _Weird, pointy ears._ He raises a hand to wave back, but aborts the gesture and leaves it suspended in midair, fingers still gently curled, as his heart lodges itself firmly inside his throat and his eyes fix on the still unnamed figure, view no longer obscured now that Coran has turned sideways.

“No,” Keith breathes, with what little air can squeak past his erratic pulse. “The …”

“The _what_ , Keith. Some of us have better things to do than listen to you try and rub your two brain cells together.” Pidge and Hunk look up from where they have begun tinkering on a strange pyramidal flying robot to stare at the exchange.

“The sex god,” Keith decides. He clenches his hand, still hung in front of his chest, into a tight fist. He releases it to tug at his collar.

Around him, quiet settles like a blanket. Keith wrings his fingers through the sheets. “You see him too, don’t you? Not just a figment of my imagination?” Squinting, he rubs at his eyes and cranes his neck toward the trio. “There _are_ three people over there, right? Or alien people, whatever, but there’s only one other guy. You can just tell me if you don’t know who he is.”

He’s met with a steady silence. It blinks thickly at him.

“Biceps like they could crush mountains? Quads of a god? Seriously, am I hallucinating? Oh my _god_ ,” he breathes in a sigh, closing his eyes. “Is this another one of those dreams?”

“Oh my,” Hunk echoes.

“Gosh,” Pidge agrees. She turns back to the robot and begins tightening a bolt with alarming celerity.

Lance achieves uncharted territories of red.

“For someone who tries to dish it out so often,” Pidge says nonchalantly, “he really can’t take it.”

“Yeah,” Hunk says, “all bark, no bite.”

“I wouldn’t mind of bite of that tall drink of water,” Keith says, still gazing at the mystery man.

Hunk lifts one eyebrow and says, “That doesn’t make any sense, but I think I get what’s going on,” before turning back to work on the robot.

“I awaysh forget dat Keef ish from Texshish.” Pidge has a wrench clenched between her teeth. She swaps it with a screwdriver before saying, “I tink dey talk like dat in de Shouf.”

On the ground, where he has sunk to his knees, Lance is throwing a minor but spirited fit. “Keith … likes … _—_ Keith’s _interested_ in … _people_ ? _Men?"_

“To be fair,” Pidge says, gesturing toward Biceps with a tiny screwdriver. “ _H_ _im_.”

“Very fair,” acknowledges Hunk with a series of rapid nods.

“Well, _yeah_ ,” Lance seethes, “but _how_ did I miss this? How did _I_ miss this? We’ve been stuck together for not one, not two, but _eighteen months_ ; a good 40% of that time we’re shoved inside a giant, communal _mind-meld_. I am _good_ at these things. I _am_ good at these things. Great, even. Just, _how?_ ” He’s practically frothing, caught between indignation and deep amusement and just the tiniest touch of horror. His hands fist tightly in his hair.

“Weapons-grade emotional repression,” Keith offers helpfully.

Hunk snorts. “Right, as if. Red’s not going to let you fly with her if she hears you saying that.”

“I think we were all bit too busy to dwell on the depth of Keith’s enormous crush,” Pidge says reasonably, “given the threat of death lurking around every corner. But Lance, you _were_ the only one who didn’t realize I was a girl. We’d known each other for like, two years at that point.”

Hunk crosses his arms and tilts his head skywards for a couple of seconds before saying, “Yeah, hm. Well, it’s not really something I’ve given—" he clears his throat "—a lot of thought, but Keith does tend to … _gaze—_  a lot." He waves his arms between Keith and the still-mysterious man in wide, sweeping movements. "Wistfully, if I had to pick a word. I think there used to be rumors about them back at the Garrison, if I recall correctly.”

“Yeah, _but_ ,” Lance cries, throwing his hands into the air, “there also used to be rumors that Keith was the latest humanoid android cyborg thing. It would explain his simulation scores. Don’t _even,_ ” he says, throwing a hand up in protest of Hunk’s growing smile, “I literally did not even realize that he had tear ducts until four minutes ago, and even now, a well argued case could convince me that they’re just a hardware upgrade.”

“Beep boop,” says Keith, drier than the desert. “Thanks, I think.”

“You realize,” Pidge begins patiently, “that beyond the fact that he’s never _once_ mentioned girls, _ever_ , and ignoring how his eyes just melt—”

“Like limpid purple pools,” Hunk supplies.

“—Thanks Hunk, and his voice gets all soft and tender—”

“I’m imagining eyeballs melting like plastic and you can’t convince me otherwise,” Lance says through his hands. “Please spare me.”

“—when he talks to or about our favorite black paladin—”

“Considering that his only competition that we know of is _Zarkon_ , that’s not exactly high praise.” Lance is squatting on the ground and has moved onto tucking his entire head between his knees.

“—who you had a poster of, _framed_ , back in your locker at the Garrison,” Pidge says to his rapidly reddening ears, “that— I’ve lost my train of thought.”

“You were just saying that even discounting how Keith dissolves into a gentle, adoring puddle and is otherwise demonstrably more sensitive towards our fearless leader,” Hunk says.

“Thank you, Hunk. Even discounting _all that_ : taking this new information in stride,” Pidge says, a smirk tugging at her lips, “can you really say you’re surprised? I hate to generalize, but generalizing, he color-coordinates his _go-go boots_ with his jacket. His crop-top jacket. Few heterosexual men know how to choose or wear pants that are _that_ flattering.”

“Thanks,” Keith says, still dry but notably more sincere, “I was beginning to worry that my efforts were going unnoticed.”

“That’s not the point, _Pidge_ ,” Lance says, standing to cross his arms over his chest, aggressively ignoring Keith. “That’s his _brooding_ outfit; he wears that to _brood_. I just figured that maybe he uploaded one Good Charlotte album too many onto his CPU and went wild in Hot Topic. You know, Keith Kogane, sexuality: angst and swords.”

Keith furrows his eyebrows thoughtfully. “You’re actually… not all that far off. But,” he says meaningfully, “ _swords_.”

“A-anyway,” Lance continues, loudly, ignoring Keith with more gusto than ever, “I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to be surprised. All this happened _right in front of me_. Have you ever seen him flirt? Can you imagine him flirting?" Lance pulls his face into an impressive scowl and drags his voice through gravel. " _You need a sheathe for that—I’ll let you polish my sword if_ —ahem, _you light my fire—_ I can’t, I can’t do this.”

“Wow,” Keith says flatly, “give me a second to write those down, Don Juan. I can only imagine how many lucky folks have swooned into your arms.”

“I can’t believe Keith’s already recovered,” Hunk says.

“Counterpoint,” Pidge says, “consider his eyebrows. Really good, really sculpted.”

“But look at his _hair,_ ” Lance says, practically spitting the final word, waving one flippant hand at the offending party.

“I’m right here,” Keith says, irritably.

“Don’t remind me,” Lance shoots back. “It’s an abomination. I have no idea how they let you get away with it back at the Garrison. It’s a crime.”

“First of all,” Keith says, crossing his arms, “a mullet is an eminently practical—not to mention, _stylish_ — choice. No, _privilege_. Not everyone can bear one with dignity. Let me dispel, once and for all, the notion that—”

“Stywish and Pwactical,” Lance mimics with an exaggerated pout. “ _No one_ can bear one with dignity.”

“ _Ugh_ , you fucking _neanderthal_ ,” Keith groans. “It kept the sun off my neck in the desert, okay?”

There’s a bit of a pointed silence, in which Pidge coughs quietly and Hunk whispers ‘neanderthal’ somewhat wondrously, before Lance narrows his eyes and hisses, "It’s _sexless_.”

“I don’t know what you thought of me, at this ‘Garrison’ or whatever, but my shack wasn’t exactly a teeming bastion of hedonism, _Lance._ ”

“Do you remember anything else?” Pidge asks, while Lance gesticulates meaningfully towards Hunk, who raises his hands in a defensive position. (“Hunk, the only _louder_ way to declare a vow of chastity would be _literally_ joining a monastery—and declaring a vow of chastity.” “That’s nice to know, Lance.”)

Keith pauses for a moment, realizes that in the foggy miasma of his mindscape, he’s called up a shack and—not much else. “No,” he says, haltingly, looking down at where his hands have gripped at the sheets. “I don’t. Just a shack in the—I guess I remember a desert? And being alone, with this— this overwhelming sense of being,” he pauses in search of the correct word, “cast adrift, without anchor. Kind of feels the same as right now, actually. I don’t know, I just, I remember feeling this _pull,_ like magnetic poles, and this sort of desperate need— _longing?—_ I guess? To find. Something.” Keith runs his hands through his hair and clasps them at the top of his head. Turning back to Pidge, he says, “Sorry, it’s not all that illuminating.” 

Pidge opens her mouth in what looks like a protest, but before she can say anything, Lance exclaims, “Neutered! It’s a _neutered_ hairstyle!”

“Would you,” Keith says, gritting his teeth, “ _mind_ projecting your sexlessness elsewhere. I’m trying to—”

Across the room, the Princess kneels to inspect the contents of the bottom row of a metal cabinet and Keith gets his first clear look at a white fringe, gentle gray eyes, and the broadest shoulders he’s ever seen in his life.

“—ride him into the _sunset_ ,” he finishes breathlessly. “Fuck.”

The room falls silent yet again. A tiny screw falls out of the hovering robot, chirping next to Pidge’s ear, and she moves quickly to replace it. Coran and the Princess exchange looks while Shoulders continues to collect needles and syringes from off the ground, oblivious.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Keith says again, with feeling.

“Please watch your language around the children,” Hunk says. “There’s a five year old in our midst.”

“Please watch your eyebrows around the unsuspecting public,” Lance says, clutching his stomach. “Ten thousand years would be too soon to see them move like that again.”

“Someone should tell him that the Sun is only one of the smallest, furthest specks in this interminable darkness,” Pidge says. “Without a wormhole, we’d die more than a thousand times over before seeing it set, even at riding at the speed of light.”

“And what a way to go,” says Keith.

While Hunk mutters something that sounds suspiciously like ‘Texans’, Lance turns distinctly green, and Pidge jabs a couple of buttons on what appears to be a console on the flying robot. Keith watches Shoulders stand up, arch his back in a long, luxurious stretch, and realizes that he also possesses some of the longest, most sculpted legs ever to grace tight technical pants. Keith’s just beginning to wax lyrical about them to Hunk, who inches closer and closer to the door, looking trapped—

”Hunk, look at them, look how the fabric clings _just so_ , all taut power and ropey muscles and just imagine having them wrapped—no, _crushing_ —”

“Please, Keith,” Hunk says, looking harassed, “I’m very … tired.”

—when Legs looks up, turns around, sees Keith flailing his arms around wildly, and gives him a cheerful wave.

“Holy shit,” Keith says, turning the beam of watchful, burning gaze forward and scrutinizing the stranger. Hunk breathes a sigh of relief.

After a moment of stunned staring, Keith nearly launches his body out of bed in his haste to wave back.

“He’s looking over here,” he hisses, still waving enthusiastically. “Is he looking at me? Is there something on my face?” Keith brushes two fingers over his eyebrows, laying them in place. “God, _wow_. Look at those eyelashes. Are they eyelashes? Is that mascara?” Two suspicious violet eyes narrow. “It isn’t! Jesus, his eyelashes are so _long_. You _know_ what they say about long eyelashes,” he says with a grin, elbowing at Lance, who has elected to scrutinize a nearby wall instead of responding.

“Do they say something about long eyelashes?” Pidge ventures, while Hunk tries to clap a hand over her mouth.

“Big socks!” Keith crows. “Anyway, as I was saying, really good job to whoever donated their genes to this specimen. I’d suck his dad’s dick just to get a taste of the formula.”

From across the room, Coran breaks into a violent cough; the Princess flushes deep red, bright against her light hair.

Pidge’s eyes grow impossibly wide behind thick lenses. Lance makes a noise that is best approximated by a cat hacking up several cat-sized hairballs while Hunk just crosses his arms and turns his gaze skywards.

Eyelashes opens a cabinet door and peers inside.

“I’m kidding,” Keith says, looking around with an exasperated expression that he doesn't deserve. “ _Kidding_. Guys, _obviously_ I wouldn’t suck his dad’s dick. Well, I guess it depends on what his dad looked liked, but— _kidding,_ again. That was _clearly_ a joke. It’s from the internet, I didn’t make it up.”

When he still doesn’t receive a response, he crosses his arms and says, “What, a guy passes out, wakes up with no memory, and suddenly can’t make a couple of jokes?”

Pidge recovers first. “Um,” she says, intelligently. She pushes her glasses up. “It’s just that— _well_ , usually—”

“You aren’t as … _effusive_ as you’re being right now,” Hunk finishes.

“Really? Even around…all that?” Keith asks, waving his hand illustratively in Eyelashes’s direction. “You guys were just talking about how I melt or whatever.”

“Keith, what you’re doing right now is to melting as UY Scuti is to a campfire,” Hunk says. “Before you say anything, Pidge, I’m aware that that stars aren't made of fire. Point still stands.”

Pidge nods, then says, "Are we using radius or mass as the metric? Maybe we should consider brightness and temperature—"

“Whatever that means,” Keith interrupts, “past-me’s a fucking idiot.”

Lance looks like he’d agree if he weren’t so busy pressing his lips determinedly shut.

“There are just some words that beg to be said,” Keith insists. “They just can’t be contained.”

“Have you considered trying to make an effort,” Pidge mumbles, while Hunk mutters something about filing a complaint with Tupperware.

“Just look at that ass,” Keith forges on. “It demands to be praised. It _deserves_ to be praised. It deserves poems and paeans and paintings and— _Jesus_ , I could write soliloquies and sonnets to that ass. Epic poems. With internal rhyme schemes and pentamic iambeter and whatever shit.” He clasps one solemn hand to his chest and raises the other arm aloft, beckoning, palm towards the ceiling. “Wherefore art thou perky as fuck. Jesus H. Christ.”

“Please keep the good Lord’s name out of your blasphemous mouth,” says Lance, speaking for the first time in minutes, eyes still trained on the wall. “Are you even religious?”

“Dunno,” Keith responds, eyes still focused on Perky. “I am now.”

Suddenly, Coran drops a box of gauze on the ground as a spasm runs down his left leg. His foot makes improbable contact with the box, sending it underneath a row of cabinets. As Coran turns to Keith to wink, Perky drops on his hands and knees to retrieve the box.

“Jesus wept,” Keith whispers. “Tears of joy. Thanks, God.”

The man on the floor digs the balls of his feet into the ground, folds his back into a sinuous, improbable curve, and strains to extend his reach. Keith watches thick muscles flex and pull at thin fabric.

He gulps. “It just looks so—” he furrows his eyebrows in concentration, “— _f_ _irm_. I want to touch it. I want to suffocate beneath it.” Keith raises his hands in front of his face and examines them carefully. He gives his fingers an experimental flex, clenching the air in front of him. “Could probably bounce a quarter off that ass,” he muses to himself. “Or even bigger coins—like dinner plate sized, or those ancient Chinese gongs. I want to—”

“Oh no,” Hunk says.

“Take him out to dinner,” Keith finishes.

“Oh,” Pidge says, with an air of surprise. “I thought he was going to say something like—”

“And then bang him like a gong,” Keith continues.

“—that,” Pidge concludes.

“And then eat that ass for breakfast.”

Lance claps his hands together, clears his throat and says, “ _Well_ , now that I’ve seen more of Shiro’s ass and Keith ogling Shiro’s ass than I’ve ever wanted to see—Pidge, _stop_ looking at me like that, _what—”_

“Shiro,” Keith interrupts softly, in a voice more like a caress than a sound. “ _Shiro_. Is that his name?”

The word feels like a tether, a lifeline between him and the vast expanses of cold nothing in space. In an instant, the haze in his head is replaced by a warm, blanketing comfort. It’s no more illuminating than the confusion that preceded it, but grounding and stable and bright nonetheless, like sunlight streaming through gauzy white curtains to alight on a bed that doesn’t have to be left for hours.

“Shiro,” he repeats again. He wants to roll the name around in his mouth, wants to press it to every soft spot in his body and cradle it in his hands like something very small, very dear, very precious, very close.

On the other side of the room, the man himself has stood up, unable to reach the box by stretching. He walks around to the side of the cabinet, peers underneath, and in one fluid motion, picks the entire structure up. The Princess darts underneath and grabs the gauze. Keith, for the third time in as many minutes, reaches the brink of tears.

“What the fuck,” he whispers.

The Princess glances in his direction, then at Coran, then beckons Shiro forward. Still looking at Keith, she whispers something into Shiro’s ear, then steps back, gestures towards the table in the corner, and nods emphatically. A little line appears between Shiro’s eyebrows; he cocks his head to the side—Keith’s heart makes another bid to escape through his mouth—before looking at the table and shrugging one massive shoulder.

A quiet hum is Keith’s only warning before Shiro’s right arm starts glowing bright purple. He lowers it into the center of the table and the metal surface gives way like butter to a hot knife. Shiro looks back at the Princess, eyebrow cocked, and she nods again, waves her hands in little circles. Tentatively, looking deeply confused, Shiro mimics the motion with his right arm, pushing the material out to the side. At some point, the Princess nods once, Shiro’s arm returns to a cool gray, and he pulls it out of the now-sizable hole.

“Perfect, Shiro! We _so_ needed a table like that, with a giant hole right in the middle,” Keith hears Coran exclaim, clapping. “Really well done!”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Keith whispers again.

“That _does_ take some getting used to,” Lance says.

“Fist me, Shiro. Split me in half.”

“That is possibly the worst reaction you could have possibly had,” says Pidge.

“And the worst thing you’ve ever forced me to imagine,” says Hunk.

“I knew it,” Keith continues. “There’s no way he’s human. Aliens really _are_ real.”

“You'll look back at this moment someday and laugh,” Pidge says. "Probably."

“Is he an alien? A robot?” Keith gasps, then says, “The sex machine of my dreams.”

“Keith’s got a robot fetish,” Lance whispers.

“Mechaphilia,” Pidge supplies. The little robot beeps a confirmation.

Keith does not rise to the bait. Keith stares attentively at the other side of the room, where Shiro is laughing at something that Coran has said, left arm pressed to the center of his chest, head thrown back in mirth.

“That I were a fingerless glove upon that hand,” Keith sighs, “that I may touch that chest.”

“Nothing will ever surprise me ever again,” Lance says. “Nothing.”

“ _How_ does he look so good in a _vest?_ _No one_ should look that good in a vest. Christ.” Keith takes a shuddering breath. “Except for you, Hunk, you look great.”

Hunk preens. “Thank you, Keith.”

“The only surprise is that I didn’t see this coming,” Lance continues monotonously. “How could I have been so blind.”

“‘Weapons-grade emotional repression’,” Pidge quotes. “Also, you’re not very observant.”

“It was a rhetorical question, Pidge.”

“I would start a hundred wars to preserve that smile,” Keith interrupts, deadly serious. “I would raze entire civilizations to the ground if it made him happy. I would cross galactic oceans and fight a thousand battles and take ten thousand bullets to give him everything he ever wanted.”

“This explains a lot about how he fights,” Pidge says, to no one in particular.

“I would pluck all the stars from the sky and all the flowers from the ground and all the beauty from the sea and craft him a crown so he could always be surrounded by light in his life; would protect him with my life and my next life and the next and all my lives forevermore, with every atom of my being and shred of my soul.”

In the moment it takes Keith to pause his raving and take several deep breaths, Hunk says, faintly, “We’re the last hope of the universe; I can’t decide if this is terrifying or inspiring me.”

“Whoever gave him that scar on his nose—I’ll carve out their beating heart with my bare fingers and eat it while they watch. I would—I —wait, _what the fuck_ , what is this—am I _crying_?”

“Maybe both,” Hunk decides. “Also, yes.”

“Get out of the way, tears,” Keith says, furiously. “I need to see.”

After wiping his eyes on his sleeves, Keith looks up to see Shiro making his way across the room towards him, concern obvious on his face. He’s followed by Coran and the Princess, who look significantly less worried.

Keith reaches out next to him and catches the nearest object, which happens to be Lance’s jacket, in an ironclad grip. “Lance, help,” he begs, eyes imploring, two bright red spots coloring his cheeks.

“Please,” Lance says, sounding like a broken man. “Please wash your hands if you’re going to insist on breaching my personal space.”

Keith ignores him. “I think he’s coming over here, what should I do? Do I say hello?”

Lance rolls his eyes, sighs, then opens to his mouth to speak. His eyes widen as he closes it again, a corner of his mouth curling ominously, but Keith, mesmerized by the gentle sway of Shiro’s hips as he maneuvers around medical equipment, is too distracted to notice.

Ignoring Hunk’s heated glare from across the bed, Lance winks conspiratorially, then whispers, “Oh, _Keith_. Shiro’s the universe's most eligible bachelor, you know. The alien ladies—and _gentlemen_ —just can’t get enough of him.”

Keith hangs onto every word like a lifeline. “Can’t blame them.”

From his other side, Pidge nods. Hunk gapes. “Why are you encouraging this,” he whispers.

“Yeah, Keith,” Pidge says, elbowing Hunk in the side. “If you want to catch his attention then you really have to—” she punches her right fist into her left hand and grips it tightly, “— _catch his attention_. _Seize_ it. Carpe the fuck out of this diem.”

“Now _guys_ , don’t—” Hunk starts, before Keith turns the beam of his unnaturally alert gaze onto him. Hunk falters. “Uh, what I _mean_ to say is, don’t... _forget_ , Shiro should be romanced. He’s a, um, an old-fashioned kind of guy, you know? Chivalry and, uh, dragons and— _ahem_ —pulling the chair out for you. Flowers and sweet nothings … and all that.”

“ _Sweet nothings_ _,_ ” Lance breathes. “Hunk, you’re a genius.”

Keith gulps, then nods, then faces Shiro down with all the ferocity of a post-dental surgery patient. Which, in Keith’s case, is commendably ferocious.

“Keith,” says Shiro, once he’s reached his side. He reaches his left hand out, places it gently, reassuringly on Keith’s right shoulder, and Keith does his best to not curl into the touch. He is not that successful. “Are you okay? I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you to wake up, but Lance said he had it under control.”

Keith doesn’t _quite_ burst into tears, but tears do appear and it does feel like something has burst—Keith thinks it might be his heart. Shiro reacts with palpable alarm, takes Keith by the shoulders, and says, “Keith? _Keith?_ Are you okay? Should I call a doctor? I _can’t_ call a doctor. We don’t _have_ a doctor—well, I guess Coran did the operation but I have _serious_ doubts that that man has ever seen the inside of a medical school and—”

“I’ve seen photographs!” Coran says indignantly while Pidge just shushes Shiro. “Wait,” she tells him. “Just listen.”

Keith takes a deep, shuddering breath. Hearing his name in Shiro’s voice had felt like something in his body, something caged and scared and hung from a very high shelf, had been set free. Like something fraught and teetering precariously, more precious than jewels and more vital than organs, had been gently tipped over—then caught in very strong hands.

Keith’s magnetic north aligns itself against the man standing next to him and Keith will follow his voice home.

He tells Shiro as much, with greater oratory flair and matching gesticulations.

“To conclude,” he says thoughtfully, tearfully, “I don’t recognize your face, though it’s a very good face, but I feel like I’ve known you forever and it still isn’t enough.”

Scowling, he adds, “Also, you’re making me change my opinion about skunks.”

“I— _what_ ? What is going _on_?Skunks? I have some—I have _a lot_ —of questions,” Shiro says, closing his eyes and pinching his fingers around his scar. “Okay, first: I wasn’t aware that you had very strong feelings about skunks in the first place, Keith. But it’s very generous of you to be so open-minded about it.”

“I didn’t, but now they’re rapidly becoming my favorite animal,” Keith informs him amiably. “You remind me of a skunk.”

“The peak of romance,” Hunk whispers. “His words will transcend time and human language.” Shiro stares at him despairingly.

“Not like a normal skunk though,” Keith continues, “like, a really muscular one. That emerged from the heavens as Aphrodite did from the sea, except instead of seafoam and cupids…” He lifts a considering hand to his chin. “Testosterone and muscles. And whatever light makes your eyes shine the way they do. And great aftershave. Not a skunk at all, if I’m going to be honest. Which I am. What I was saying, though, is that I like your hair. It looks great for pulling. And my name sounds great—unbelievably so, actually—in your voice, better than I could have ever imagined—and I _have_ imagined, many times. If I haven’t mentioned that already.”

“You’ve only mentioned it,” Pidge says, consulting a small notebook, “seven times. Eight, if you want to argue that the sentence that started with ‘ _My name; your voice_ ’ and ended in ‘ _Uaghfhgh_ ’ counts.”

“Count it, Pidge,” says the Princess.

Shiro blinks twice, then gently removes his hands from Keith’s shoulders and stands upright. He wears the distinct look of someone reorganizing and reshuffling the bulk of his life experiences. He stares at Keith for several charged seconds. Keith stares back.

“Whenever someone feels like filling me in,” Shiro says slowly, at long last. He looks around for an explanation, throwing his cheekbones into sharp relief. Keith looks around for some strength. “It would be much appreciated.”

“I’d love to fill you up—in. In general.” Keith says. Shiro doesn’t even bat an eye, just stands there placidly with his arms hanging at his sides, like he’s waiting for a weather report. His chest rises and falls in measured, controlled breaths.

“Amnesia,” Pidge says, then quickly adds, “ _temporary_ ,” when she catches the look on his face. “He’s fine otherwise and should recover in a matter of hours.”

Relief floods Shiro’s face before he wipes the expression off quickly and pastes on a reassuring smile. He places his hand back onto Keith’s shoulder and begins to rub gentle circles into his collarbone; Keith resists the urge to sigh.

“I see. Just take it easy, Keith. Amnesia can be frustrating,” he says.

“I’m not frustrated at all when you’re here—you make me feel safe,” says Keith, very seriously.

This earns him a very pretty blush that dusts over Shiro’s cheeks like the first flakes of a gentle snowfall over rolling pastures. His scar fades a little against the rising color, making him look years younger. Keith dutifully sears the memory into the backsides of his eyelids.

“ _Sexually_ frustrated, maybe,” he concedes, gulping.

His gaze sweeps down from Shiro’s rapidly reddening face to his neck, lingers briefly around his Adam’s apple, gulping, tiptoes over his traps, slithers across his shoulders, caresses his arms and locks onto the circular motion of his thumb. “Great arm. Arms, I mean, they’re both very, _very_ , um— _nice_. Face. Nice face. Yours, I mean,” Keith manages. “Very good face and arms. _Please_ punch me in the face.”

“Shiro,” Lance says earnestly. “Do it. You’re missing a great opportunity. I’ll do it for you.”

“You could do it for yourself if you ever finally beat Keith in a spar,” says Hunk.

Lance’s face contorts in shock. “ _Hunk?_ Et _tu_? I expected that from _Pidge_ , maybe, but I guess _treason_ —”

Hunk shrugs with a smile, raises his hands in defense. “Sorry, _sorry_. It’s just because he’s so disoriented and all. Protective instinct, I think. He’s like a baby bird.”

Lance starts to protest, “Baby birds don’t know the word _neanderthal_ , Hunk,” but when they look back over at Keith, there is indeed something newborn beneath the glimmer in his eyes, something fragile but flourishing in the slight tremble of his outstretched index finger. Keith pushes it into the dip between Shiro’s eyebrows with uncharacteristic hesitation.

“Beep boop,” he whispers. His heart takes flight.

Shiro lets his own fingers ghost over the spot where Keith touched, something between awe and fondness, dusted with just a hint of longing, written in the lines of his face. He lifts his left hand off of Keith’s shoulder and makes to brush the hair out of Keith’s eyes, before realizing that six sets of wide eyes stare intently at him. As he jerks his hand away, Keith snatches it in both of his.

“I just can’t believe,” Keith says, staring up at Shiro, “that I could forget a face like yours.”

Shiro snorts and raises his free hand to rub at the back of his neck. “Can’t possibly imagine what that’s like.”

“But,” Keith continues, “if this means that I can wake up every day and see your smile as if for the first time every morning, I’d die a happy man. Carve that into my gravestone.”

“We—I,” Shiro begins, faltering. “We’re not going to think about your gravestone any time soon, Keith,” he says, an steely edge to his voice behind kind eyes.

“Oh,” Keith says, looking around. “That’s good, I guess. This rules out my heaven hypothesis, though. Say, can I buy you dinner?”

“This is absurd,” Lance whispers. “This never works.”  
  
“ _Shh_ ,” Hunk shoots back. “I’ve finished all the movies in this ship _five_ times already—even the Arusian adaptations. Been bored out of my mind.”

“So humans exchange various foodstuffs as a sign of affection,” the Princess says in a hushed voice, one contemplative eyebrow raised. “This is very intriguing.”

“Is the shapeshifting a part of the ritual?” Coran asks, gesturing towards Shiro’s completely flushed face. “I never realized that humans could do it too; you’re all such _interesting_ creatures.”

“In order: yes, Allura, food’s a pretty big part of human courtship; no, Coran, we can’t shapeshift. That’s all Shiro,” Pidge says. “You should know that you’ve decided on pretty bad examples when it comes to observing normal human behavior.”

“Okay,” says Shiro, taking an unwieldy step closer to the bed and lowering himself to sit at Keith’s side. “Let’s just calm down for a second. Deep breathing exercises. Count to ten, find your zen.”

“We are … all calm,” Hunk points out.

Between deep breaths, Shiro says, “‘M talking to myself."

Suddenly, there’s a pressure on his shoulder; Keith has placed his hand on it, alternately patting it and petting it lightly. “Don’t worry,” he says with a yawn. “You can tell me your answer later; I’d wait a lifetime for you.” He releases Shiro’s shoulder, sidles back into the prone position, and pulls the covers up to his chin. “I’m going to take a nap, though, now that I know what to dream about,” he adds, before falling asleep.

Silence falls over the room.

Shiro buries his face into his hands; the tips of his ears burn.

Lance looks caught between being impressed and being nauseous. He mumbles something that sounds like “ _nooooooo_ ” and “ _my hero … by such a lowlife_ ” into Hunk’s shoulder while Hunk pats him on the back soothingly.

Allura and Coran sweep out the door, murmuring something about how Earthlings never cease to impress and to inspire and occasional repulse them, and the mice follow closely behind, chattering excitedly.

“Pidge,” Shiro says, voice muffled in his hands.

“I got it,” she responds, fingers flying over some buttons on the robot. “I got all of it recorded. You want it sent to your lion or your bedroom?”

“The bedroom, I gue—wait, _what_? They’re the same interface, aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” she snickers. “I just wanted to see where you’d watch it.”

“I plead entrapment. And the fifth.”

“Bill of Rights doesn't apply in space. You want subtitles or no?”

“... Yes, please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my oc self insert his name is keith kogane i love him very much haters please don't flame
> 
> a brief, more in character (hopefully) discussion between shiro and keith to follow shortly  
> it'll still be ridiculous though


	2. i need my baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere between mortification and abject mortification, Keith acquires a date.

Keith wakes up to a pounding in his head and a cloying sense of foreboding creeping through his veins.

From his left, he hears Pidge whisper, “I think he’s waking up,” which he ignores in favor of chasing the last threads of a very curious dream about seafoam and sunsets and, inexplicably, skunks.

When they finally slip entirely out of his grasp, he pries open his eyes, which close again, tries to shake off a hovering sense of deja vu, which stays, and groans with the effort of waking up. The overhead light above him wreaks havoc on his headache. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyelids; the staticky stars that burst in view remind him of one final episode of his dream: trying to catch stars with a butterfly net.

“Pidge,” he finally says, turning to his side, where she wears a massive grin. “Lance, Hunk. Nothing better to do than watch me sleep?”

Lance pouts, which Keith files under ‘reactions he didn’t expect but who knows, it’s Lance’ before nearly missing him say, “Oh man, he remembered us this time,” as his vision forcibly whites out.

Keith’s eyes fix on something straight in front of him, one thousand miles past Lance and Pidge’s heads, unseeing, while the memory of the last twenty-four hours floods his senses with all the fury of an avenging angel. “Oh no,” he says weakly.

“Oh _yes_ ,” says Lance.

_“Lance.”_

_“Keith.”_

“Hunk,” says Hunk.

“Tell me…” Keith mutters, gripping his face in a 3/4ths-hearted attempt at asphyxiation, “tell me that everything I’m suddenly remembering is a figment of my wildest imagination, that I just _dreamt_ of spilling my heart out to _Takashi Shirogane_ , pride and joy of the Galaxy Garrison, decisive leader of Voltron, finest fighter and military mind of our generation, who I have to face every single day, in person—” he pauses to swallow “—tell me that I didn’t tell him I could bounce a quarter off of his ass.”

Pidge just smiles with a joy that Keith does not feel, suspects that he will never feel again, and says, “Are you implying that Shiro’s the man of your dreams?”

And because Keith cannot trust anyone anymore, not even his own friends, Hunk wrinkles his nose and says, very mildly, “Is _that_ what’s been in your heart all this time?”

Lance looks like he’s tamping down on many other suggestions of what could be inside Keith’s heart, because reality is so much more humiliating than any snappy rejoinder, when he grins and says, “Strictly speaking, you didn’t actually say that to his face. You did, however—”

“Please,” Keith groans. “ _Lie_ to me. Honor a dying man’s last wishes.”

“In that case,” Hunk says, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, “you didn’t confess your undying love to Shiro, nor your deeply seated need to uproot heaven and hell for his happiness.”

“Or say that you wanted to ride him into the sunset,” says Pidge, counting on her fingers. “Or bang him, ‘like a gong’.”

Keith avoids hearing the rest of their methodical recollection of his many personal flaws, complete with Lance’s spirited commentary—look at him brooding, I _told_ you he broods!—, by sinking into the bed and barricading himself in shame. He lets the sound of a steady, sustained mental shriek soothe him until Lance’s voice makes its way through fifteen walls of self-recrimination and regret and says, “And Shiro _definitely_ isn’t walking towards us right now.”

Lance pushes himself to his feet; Pidge and Hunk follow suit. Keith considers ritual suicide.

“And we aren’t leaving you to your own devices,” Pidge calls out with a jaunty wave, before they scurry out the door like the absolute traitors they are.

Keith has approximately 2.7 seconds to consider the pros and cons of pretending he’s still sleeping, pretending he’s died peacefully in his sleep, and impaling himself on his luxite blade. With .7 seconds left, the last option is the most appealing, even if it does carry the unfortunate consequence of being comparatively permanent. Which, of course, is also a bit of an advantage.

Before he finishes deliberating, his time runs out.

“Hey,” says Shiro, taking a seat on the bed next to where Keith is rapidly burying himself to his burning ears in blankets. “It’s good to have you back.”

Keith’s heart rate beats out an enthusiastic response, but his vocal chords are better trained and remain studiously silent.

“How are you,” Shiro tries again.

“I brought you a glass of water,” he says patiently. “Promise I didn’t cook it myself.”

“I’ll just put it here then.” There’s the sound of glass clinking against the bedside table as the pressure on the bed shifts. Shiro sits back down, folds his legs, leaning back against the huddled, sweltering mass of Keith and his blankets, and settles in for the long haul.

Because Shiro, beneath all of his layers of guarded defense and dry cynicism, is a hopeless optimist, he’s smiling when he turns his head and presses his cheek against Keith’s shoulder blade. Keith feels more than sees it: the blankets press up against Keith’s back, which burns.

Then Shiro opens his mouth and says, conversationally, as if this were a conversation, “Coran and Allura are investigating whether or not they can turn the anesthetic into Galra countermeasures; you’re the only one that it had any—” he pauses, whether it’s for dramatic effect or diction is anyone’s guess “—unanticipated effects on.”

“They might recruit you for test trials,” he adds, grinning.

From beneath the covers, Keith mutters, “Then they can drag my cold, dead body out of my tomb themselves.”

“Are you cold?” Shiro asks innocently, before suddenly draping himself over Keith and pressing his forehead to Keith’s own. “You feel like you’re burning up.”

Keith jolts like he’s been electrocuted, sending Shiro into the air, laughing, until he lands back into a seated position with a fighter’s grace. He turns to face Keith, who shakes himself loose from his blanket cocoon and hauls himself into a seated position. Once upright, Keith folds his knees into his chest and curls into himself, propping his chin up on his hand.

“Is this what we’re going to do,” Keith says, after a moment’s pause. “We’re just going to pretend that nothing happened?”

“If that’s what you’d prefer,” comes the smooth response.

Keith stares at Shiro for a second, who looks back calmly, guilelessly, then runs his hand messily through his own hair. Something crosses Shiro’s face, like he’d like to say something, but it passes in an instant and he’s back to looking serene, faintly amused, and if Keith isn’t mistaken, a little fond.

Keith opens his mouth to speak—Shiro tenses almost imperceptibly, but Keith has attuned himself to the minutiae of Shiro’s reactions—then closes it again. He decides that he’s either some sort of emotional masochist or truly, _soundly_ whipped, because the easiest way out of this conversation, just agreeing to never discuss the last 24 hours ever again, sits uncomfortably in Keith’s stomach—like a cupcake that Shiro had once made for him, but without all the gooey blushy feelings.

That Shiro would respect any need he expressed for privacy is certain. If asked to wait, Shiro would likely acquiesce without question, would probably convince to whole team to avoid the topic, and the wheels of everyday life, fighting a 10,000 year old empire and liberating the innocent, would continue to turn.

That said, while Keith’s feelings on the whole matter—the Shiro matter—wouldn’t diminish in a moratorium, ignoring them now that they’re out in the open just feels like a disservice.

Smothering his interest, now that it’s spilled forth like a river over a crumbling dam, seems as hopeless as asking the water to “yes please, kindly return back upstream”.

Whether or not Shiro reciprocates, Keith decides that denial would be disingenuous—petty and pollutative.

But even with his decision made, his reservoirs for emotional transparency and communication seem to have run dry—for pretty understandable reasons, Keith thinks, wincing as he looks back through his memory. _Eat his ass for breakfast? Really?_

Shiro watches, silent but smiling, while Keith scowls and averts his eyes. Resolve aside, there is no elegant way to phrase, “Hello, yes, you are _indeed_ the most important person in my life and I would like to have my dirty way with you and then kiss your eyelids and protect you with my whole self; anyway, please check yes if you like me too.”

Finally, Keith crosses his arms and says, “I want it on record that I _knew_ the anesthetic would be a bad idea.”

Shiro sighs and rolls his eyes to the sky, preparing himself for a well-worn argument.

Keith continues, undeterred. “‘Just rip my teeth out,’ I said. Rip them out and stick me in a healing pod; it’ll be over in five seconds. But does anyone listen to me? No, why would anyone listen to me,” he huffs. “‘That’s barbaric,’ they said—”

“That _is_ barbaric,” Shiro says. “Incredibly so.”

“Let’s just stick this 10,000 year old anesthetic in the boy; won’t that be a good time?”

“This is a moot point,” Shiro says. “The teeth are out, aren’t they? No lasting harm?”

Instead of detailing exactly what kind of lasting harm has been wrought (emotional, spiritual, and a giant wallop to his dignity and personal aesthetic), Keith leans over, curls onto his side, and pulls the blankets back up to his nose.

“Actually,” he sniffs, “a _lot_ of lasting harm. I fear I shall never recover. I’m sorry to report that I’ll be sleeping this off for the next millennia; in fact, I am already sleeping and I won’t remember any of this conversation. Please leave your name and message at the tone and I’ll probably never get back to you.”

Through slitted eyes, Keith watches as the corner of Shiro’s lips tug in a smile as he lifts his right hand up to his ear, thumb and pinky finger extended in the shape of a phone.

“ _Beeeeep_ ,” says Shiro. “Hey, sorry to catch you while you’re out! My name’s Takashi Shirogane, but you can call me Shiro. Speaking of conversations we’re not remembering—”

Keith bats his hand away from his head. “すみません,” he says, the language foreign and unused in his voice. “わかりません.” _I’m sorry, I don’t understand._

Shiro’s eyes positively twinkle. Keith watches suspiciously before remembering exactly how he had learned precisely two phrases in Japanese three years ago.

(It had been a sunny weekday afternoon; Keith and Shiro were skipping some pointless mandatory safety briefing that Keith was sure he’d be reprimanded about in a few short hours while Shiro escaped unscathed. The issue had seemed much less pressing than watching the wind ruffle Shiro’s hair while he laid around bonelessly on a sand dune.

“Why can’t you teach me something more interesting,” Keith had complained. “Like ‘eat my—”

“‘Sorry’ and ‘I don’t understand’ are two of the most useful phrases in a foreign language,” Shiro had insisted.)

Back in reality, Shiro leers at him from the side of his bed. “Ne, Kogane-kun,” he begins, eyes glittering, before Keith cuts him off with a frustrated groan.

“God, cut it out. Fine, _fine_.” He pulls himself back upright, crosses his legs, and waits for the sweet release of death. When it doesn’t come, he sighs and says, “Can I just say that this isn’t how I imagined this discussion going?”

When he looks up, Shiro’s face has softened into a fond smile. One eyebrow arches.

“This _discussion_ ,” Shiro says, gesturing to the 2.5 feet between them, “in which you purposefully evade everything I say and stymie any attempt at productive dialogue?”

Shiro’s smile curls into a smirk. “It’s almost like—” he adds, pausing deliberately because Takashi Shirogane is an overgrown manchild with the worst sense of humor “—pulling teeth.”

Keith, in all his generosity, decides to ignore the quip. “No,” he says, glaring. “That’s _exactly_ how I envisioned this conversation going— this, or launching myself into the cold expanses of space. I was referring to…”

Shiro smiles patiently. He’s the image of restraint, apart from the very slight tremor of his mechanical arm, as he waits for Keith to overcome years of guardedness and find his words.

“... my _confession_ ,” Keith finally grits out. The last word slips out like sandpaper against sharkskin.

In the silence that falls over the room, Keith nearly misses the tiny, surprised intake of breath that escapes from Shiro, who clamps his mouth shut with a click and ducks his head.

While Keith studies the way the lines around Shiro’s eyes crinkle and how color rises in his face (it sweeps out from the apples of his cheeks to the tips of his ears), something like “ _confession_ … so he meant everything he said,” slips out from where Shiro is half-hunched over in a quiet, reverent whisper. Had Keith not dreamed of hearing the specific frequency and wavelength of Shiro’s voice, stumbled through half-awake delusions in search of its gentle lilt and calming cadences for the better part of two lonely years, he may have missed it.

As it stands, Keith hears it loud and clear.

Shiro sits back up and runs his hand nervously through his hair before speaking. “You, ah, envisioned a confession?”

“No,” Keith says sourly. “I said that it went differently than how I expected, because what I expected was to continue repressing this into the rest of eternity while you swanned around with your—” he waves a flippant hand in Shiro’s direction “—shoulders and jawline, doing whatever heroic, saintly crap got us in this discussion in the first place.”

“Don’t insult my day job,” Shiro says very seriously. “Health coverage sucks, but you should hear the travel perks.”

“And you should know,” Shiro continues, watching Keith, considering, “that I wouldn’t be the man I am today without my—” he pauses again for effect “— _right hand man_.”

Another pause. “At most—” Shiro says blithely.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Keith says weakly.

“I could only be 95% of who I am today,” Shiro finishes. “By weight.”

 _This,_ Keith realizes, watching Shiro’s lips wiggle with restrained laughter, _this is who I’ve given my life or death_. This haunted, hassled, but indomitable and irrepressible man—because what more was Shiro, really? A figure of hope, a light in the nearly interminable darkness, but still just a man.

One who looked into the abyss and punched whatever looked back right in the face. Who stared insurmountable evil in the eye, armed only with patience and tenacity, and kept his grip cradled around the good in the world.

Who found himself broken and battered by the weight of the world, yet emerged with his spirit scratched but steadfast, his will tried but true, and his absolutely abhorrent sense of humor completely intact.

Keith would move mountains for him.

“I regret the day we ever met,” Keith tells him. “I’m quitting Voltron; send my regards to the universe. You may cite irreconcilable differences if you wish.”

In a swirl of gray and black, Shiro flings his right arm in the air and smacks the back of his hand against his forehead in an exaggerated swoon. “I knew it,” he cries, eyelashes fluttering dramatically, “I knew you only liked me for my body.” He grabs a bundle of Keith’s bedsheets and pretends to dab at his eyes.

Despite himself, Keith snorts. “Yeah, all of it except your mouth,” he says, before a violent whooshing sound floods his ears as his soul leaves his body. He deeply regrets everything that ever led him to this moment. He should have stayed on Earth to till the land.

Shiro drops the act immediately, angles his head towards Keith, and arches one fine eyebrow. “All of it … except my _mouth_?”

It would take a very good man—or alien—to avoid looking down at Shiro’s mouth now that their attention is so drawn, and Keith simply isn’t that strong. Violet eyes flicker down to plush, pink lips, bitten red in the corner that Shiro’s caught in his teeth. It’s only a very short step of logic to imagine that smirk wrapped around Keith’s—

“Fucking dick, I meant because it won’t stop _talking_ ,” Keith says heatedly. He bunches some blankets up in his lap. “As I was saying, goodbye forever. If you need me, I’ll be drifting off into the unfeeling cold of space.”

“Red would come get you,” Shiro says reasonably. “If I hadn’t already.”

“Red respects me as a half-person and would honor my request to die with dignity.”

Shiro just hums thoughtfully, so Keith continues babbling, mostly out of nerves, “Didn’t anyone ever teach that it’s rude to kick a man while he’s down? I’m _ailing_. I’m sure you have better things to do than pick on the infirm.”

Shiro grins and it reaches his eyes in a way that suggests, no, he does not have anything better to do than sit here and tease Keith. No intergalactic dictator to worry about, no weight of the galaxy hanging on his too young, broad but too narrow shoulders. Keith’s heart expands with the thought.

“If you had continued your education at the Garrison,” Shiro begins, now smirking. Keith shoots him a pointed glare, which he ignores to continue saying, “Then you would know that they taught me press my advantage and seize my victories where ever I could.”

“You’re a tyrant,” Keith says, but he’s smiling as he says it. “I can’t believe they let you lead us.”

“I know, I can’t believe it either.” Shiro’s shoulders shake while he chuckles. “Terrible mistake, really. I keep telling Allura and Coran, but—”

“Self-deprecation isn’t very becoming of you,” Keith interrupts, which is, of course, a lie. Keith curses his weak heart and its enormous, 6’2” blind spot, then reaches for the glass of water for a drink, perhaps a touch more angrily than necessary.

“Yes it is,” Shiro says knowingly. “And it’s not the only thing that might _becoming_ , if you play your cards right.”

Keith spits an entire mouthful of water into Shiro’s face.

“Okay,” Shiro mutters, brushing wet bangs out of his face. “Wild card. Guess I should have expected that.”

“Well,” Keith says, bristling, clutching the last shreds of his dignity. “You’re the one playing dirty.”

Shiro’s smile curls lasciviously; one million and one puns flicker behind gray eyes and Keith puts up a pre-emptive hand. “Don’t. Please, mercy.”

Shiro folds his hands primly in his lap. “All’s fair in love and war,” he informs Keith.

Keith’s chest seizes; his heart makes another, more spirited attempt to vacate the premises via his esophagus. He hadn’t dare voice the word, even in all his drug-induced ranting. “Yeah?” Keith hears himself say, “which one of them is this?”

In lieu of a cheeky response, Shiro cocks his head to the side, eyes contemplative and fond. Keith slides further down into his blankets. The bedsprings creak as the weight on the bed shifts; Shiro scoots over and makes himself comfortable against the headboard, sitting next to Keith. He drapes his left arm over the pillow and there’s a warm, gentle pressure on the top of Keith’s head. It rests there, still, for a moment, until fingers begin to tease lightly though Keith’s hair. The thought occurs to Keith that he hasn’t washed it in 36 hours and has, in that time, sweat somewhat profusely. Before he can protest, Shiro begins to speak.

In low tones that Keith can feel through the vibration in his side, Shiro says, “Well, as for the latter, there’s definitely a war going on.”

Keith snorts, then stifles a sound from the bottom of his throat when Shiro’s fingers tighten in his hair.

“As for the … _former_ ,” Shiro continues, before pausing. The fingers in Keith’s hair maintain their silent, gentle worship. One featherlight stroke brushes against the shell of his ear, coaxing a quiet shudder out of Keith.

“As for _love_ ,” he finally says, the word unfurling from his lips like an offering, “I leave that decision in your capable hands.”

 _It’s up to you_ , Keith reads between well-loved lines. _I love you—have loved you, have quietly adored you from this lonely perch between ever-encroaching evil and everything I’ve held dear. I love you_ too _, if you’ll permit._

When Keith lifts his eyes to meet Shiro’s gaze, steady and assured and just a little bit resigned, Shiro raises his right arm in the air in front of him. He glances at it, methodically flexing mechanical fingers. “Never done me wrong before,” he says with a wink.

“Of course,” he says suddenly, clearing his throat. “It wouldn’t be too much to ask if you wanted to just wanted to—” he waves a hand around haphazardly “—ignore all of this. I don’t want to force you into anything, or make you uncomfortable; we never have to talk about this again, if you’d prefer.” He dislodges his arm from against the headboard and shifts to sit across from Keith again.

“As a team,” he continues, and this is the black paladin speaking for Shiro, “we have goals.”

Were his brain not rapidly diverting resources to keeping his vital organs functional, Keith might have burst out laughing; who, besides Shiro, would refer to something as enormous as intergalactic diplomacy and overthrowing an overpowered regime of evil and make it sound as mundane as quitting coffee for the new year?

Keith is living proof that Shiro has a penchant for impossible projects. Who, besides Shiro, had willingly extended both hands and a friendly smile to a terrified, belligerent cadet—then offered the same two hands (albeit, one now mechanical) to a terrified half-alien? Had pulled Keith under his careful, gentle wing in all iterations of his vulnerability, reigned in all that anger and fear and redirected it into something not only productive, but good?

Someone else probably could have, Keith knows—Earth has eight billion people too many to think that kindness and strength of Shiro’s magnitude was singular—but in his life, it was always Shiro, wasn’t it?

It was always Shiro who had been there to urge Keith above and beyond his potential, and had been there behind him every step of the way, to ground him and support him and catch him if he fell.

Keith feels a rushing flood of affection threatening to drown what very little remained of his good sense. Always the right man, could this be the right time?

Two feet away, Shiro nods to himself while he speaks while he speaks. “Goals,” he repeats, “so if you’d rather pretend that nothing ever happened—” his face draws into a grimace “—then you might need to act fast, actually. There’s a nonzero possibility that Pidge may or may not have recorded, um, everything between when you woke up and when you went back to sleep on Rover++, and—”

“I’m going to melt that thing down and sell it for scrap metal,” Keith growls.

“—I think she was saying something about four separate external drives,” Shiro says, wincing. “Of course, I’ll help you track them down and ask her to delete—”

“Shiro,” Keith interrupts, before Shiro can ramble his way into another topic. “Dinner—”

“Are you hungry?” Shiro says quickly, looking concerned. “I was going to bring you something to eat, but Hunk and Coran were busy and I didn’t trust myself to actually cook—actually, I attempted, but no need to elaborate—”

“Dinner.” Keith says again, wondering for not the first time why his heart wants what it wants. “With me.”

“It’s 10:52AM right now, but if that’s what you want,” Shiro says. “Then sure. Food goo might be ok for you to eat with your teeth—”

“Shiro,” Keith says. “Please let me buy you dinner. At a restaurant. Sometime in the near future.”

“Oh,” says Shiro.

“ _Oh,”_ says Shiro. A blush blazes across his face like wildfire. “Y-yeah, of course. I’d like that.”

For whatever reason, he can’t meet Keith’s eyes.

“Are you okay?” Keith ventures. “Did I say someth— _oh._ You—you watched the video, didn’t you.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny the existence or the nonexistence of the information you requested.”

Keith sighs. “So if I were to say I enjoy _riding_ —” Shiro’s entire body twitches “— _horses_ , then—”

“I would comment entirely platonically on how nice it is that you’re making your Texan countrymen proud,” Shiro says, eyes darting everywhere but Keith’s lower body. “I would not suggest that you save a horse and ride a cowboy. I would mention that Red might want a word with you about this infidelity.”

Keith looks pointedly at a small bead of sweat forming on Shiro’s left temple.

“Fine, you got me,” Shiro says, after the silence drags on. He holds his wrists together and out towards Keith; his eyes take on an impish gleam. “I would say I was coerced but I would but the reality is that you were very charming. Guilty as charged—cuff me, officer.”

“You’re a menace to society,” Keith says, manfully resisting the urge to punch or kiss Shiro right in his perfect jawline.

“Are you going to take me into custody?”

“Not until I take you to dinner,” Keith says, then delights in the color that blooms in Shiro’s face.

Shiro hums. “Misuse of police power. A promising start already.”

“Talk legal to me, baby.”

“You know what they call me,” Shiro says, laughing and leaning easily into Keith’s space. He sidles in next to Keith and flexes one impressive bicep. “Legendary Defender in the streets, public defender in the sheets.”

Keith pokes the proffered arm with open interest. The muscle doesn’t give an inch. “I don’t believe anyone’s ever called you that.”

“Perhaps not,” Shiro says, making himself comfortable against the headboard. He pulls Keith against him; Keith is drawn in without resistance. “But it isn’t too late to start.”

Nestled against Shiro’s shoulder, Keith lets himself believe in beginnings.

 

 ~~~

 

“Are they kissing yet?” Hunk whispers, pressing his face into the slit between the doors.

“Stop shoving,” Pidge whispers back, fiddling with a small handheld device. “The connection’s going in and out. Shiro’s—”

“Please… _don’t_ ,” Lance mutters. “Keith hasn’t even brushed his teeth.”

“I can’t hear anything,” Coran says, with his ear against the ground.

Allura informs them that the mice are having trouble finding a way in. “Perhaps we should leave them be,” she says. “They might be quiznaking.”

As Lance pantomimes vomiting, Pidge suddenly whispers, “Wait! I’ve got a visual! Keith is—Keith is flipping us off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dinner:
> 
> [shiro voice] do you really think my hair looks like a skunk
> 
> [keith voice] let's talk about something else
> 
> ((also thank you to everyone who commented you are the light in my life and along w/ sheith, keep me young))


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